VizEpis : A visualization and mapping tool for interpreting epistasis

An important issue in genetic association studies is gene-gene interaction (epistasis) underlying common complex diseases that are affected by multiple genetic factors. Although many methods have been proposed to analyze epistasis, the interpretation of the identified gene-gene interactions is not straightforward. In order to efficiently provide the statistical interpretation and biological evidences of gene-gene interactions, we developed the VizEpis, a tool for visualizing of gene-gene interactions in genetic association analysis and mapping of epistatic interaction to the biological evidence from public interaction databases. Using interaction network and circular plot, the VizEpis provides to explore the interaction network integrated with biological evidences in epigenetic regulation, splicing, transcription, translation and post-translation level. To aid statistical interaction in genotype level, the VizEpis provides pairwise checkerboard, forest, and funnel. VizEpis provides for the user-specified variants with statistical interaction to find biological evidences.